London, street lights and.. an angel


Part I

‘Pete, where is the coffee cup?’, that was my mom from the kitchen.

‘I think I left it on the computer table mom’, that was me from the hall without even a wince. Most probably, it would have been a Spielberg movie on the television that I was concentrating on.

‘Peter, it’s been ages since you arranged the rack..! Is today a good day?’, that was my dad calling me from my room.

‘I will do it next weekend dad..!’, that was me again. It should have been a Dan Brown novel I was into.

‘Bugger..! Wake up..! Will you give me a hand? The flower vase is heavy..!!!’, definitely my sister. Never mind, I would not even have bothered to answer.

That was me, the guy in the early twenties, with no worries in the world or household responsibilities to shoulder, perfectly enjoying the best days of life.

Eight months had passed since then, like a dream. And, here I am: In the capital of the United Kingdom. That, I should agree, is one hell of a twist in life.

Typically for a bachelor who moves for an onsite assignment would turn out to be difficult with not many options for cooking, stay etc. But, it turned out that luck was still shining on me as at home. I had my cousin out here to help me out. So, technically, home-made-food and a comfortable place to stay was not a problem at all. And even better was that she was a nurse and there was no question about the immediate medical attention as well.

London is a great place to be. Very orderly, polite people, excellent transport, romantic locales and everything with one vital catch. You need to take care of yourself.

Shopping for vegetables, groceries, household cleaning, boiler malfunction, broadband connection, oooopppss! Not my cup of tea. For a guy who never even had moved a coffee cup at home, it definitely was one hell of a twist in my easy going life.

One cannot keep complaining about stuff like these, can they? Absolutely not. I definitely learnt to shoulder, though not completely, at least some of the responsibilities at home with my cousin. And then came the biggest twist of all – shifting to a new house.

With the rental agreement of the apartment coming to a break, my cousin and I were pushed to locate a new house. With my period of stay in London uncertain and the cost factors coming into play, it was a difficult task indeed. It took us a little over five weeks to finalise a house to move in. That was the less difficult task of all the difficult tasks coming soon.

Back in India and just before moving to London, I had moved my parents from my native to a rented house in Chennai. Surely there was a lot of shifting done while I was busy with my weekend errands with my friends. Seems it was someone’s curse, finally I had to shoulder this, that too thousands of miles away from my home.

With very little time to spare from work, other than the time to sleep, both my cousin and I had never been able to sort out our plans to confirm our contracts, arrange for help and to shift our whole lots of things to the new house. We had to run over our schedules again and again to understand we were never going to make a final plan.

At an unexpected time on a Monday afternoon, my cousin called me up to say, ‘We are shifting tonight, whatever time it is going to be.’

‘You got to be kidding me..!’

‘No..! As serious as ever’, she said

‘I can’t come home before seven and you can never reach home before nine’, I reminded her.

‘I guess there is no other option. I have friends to help us out today and this is the only way we are going to move the things. They are free only tonight.’

With only my cousin and me working on this ‘House shifting’ project, it was going to be a nightmare. The only way out was to get the help out of my cousin’s friends.

According to the new plan, we started getting our things together onto the arranged mini truck. That was one hell of a workout. My word, it took us three whole hours to just fit all the things into the truck cabin. And the time, well, the clock had just ticked eleven pm. We all were dog tired. But we didn’t know it was going to be a longer night than what it seemed.

My cousin was the first person to get down from the truck. She hurried to open the door of our new house, while her friends and I began to unload the things. We would not even have brought the third carton box out of the van when we heard a loud, ‘OH MY GOD..!’. It was my cousin.

That gave us a serious fright. And we reached the door in a split second to see what it was.

‘I didn’t do it..!’, she began, with an awful and bewildered look.

‘What? What did you do, eh, didn’t do?’, we asked with none of us understanding what was happening.

‘I don’t know, but this is what happened’, she showed something.

That was the funniest and the most interesting thing that I had ever seen in my life. Seriously, for a few minutes we didn’t know how to react to this. But as usual, we burst into laughter. The thing that my cousin held in her hand was ‘half’ of what should have been the key to our new house. The second she turned it in the key hole, it had broken into two halves.

At midnight, in a place we hardly knew and during the worst of English winters, we all stood under the street lights with half-a-key in hand trying to figure out what to do next. Out of the splendid discussions, we had three options.

First being, breaking the door. That would mean, we might end up in jail. No kidding. We can’t afford that.

The second was waiting in the street till the morning to make a new key. Well, that would mean we were going to freeze in the cruel winter. Nope. Not a good option either.

The third was waking up the landlord who lived a couple of hours away, even if it was midnight. Yup, a sensible option finally.

Thanks to God, there was late night cab service right at the end of the street. My cousin and one of her friends decided to take the drive and her other friend and I agreed to guard the things placed outside the house.

‘Its gonna be a long night’, we thought.

As a normal habit of mine, I kept gazing around at the houses trying to while away time and make sure those ghosts and vampires, from my movie collection, don’t spring out of the darkness. This seemed to be a quiet neighbourhood. I was beginning to like this new place.

I was taking a stroll on the street to keep my self warm. I was walking back and forth trying to count the stars, look at the leaves, and check out the windows of our new house, all in vain, trying to burn time. I was counting every minute and couldn’t wait to get into the house; the cold was really terrible that night.

With every minute counting and the temperature dropping, I started a messy search into the carton boxes for a couple of my coats and my much beloved mufflers. I stuffed my self in more than two sweaters and three mufflers. Hopefully, my cousin was going to reach back before I froze.

It had been about thirty to forty minutes since we ended up on the streets. Just then, I noticed some movement at the farther end of the street with a couple of guys crossing with a concerned look towards us. And then a tall guy crossed the street at the near end with a serious look at me. He walked fast across and said something into his phone. I guess I heard it right.

‘Double Positive’, that was what he said.

I didn’t understand what that meant, at least not for the next ten seconds. And the meaning struck and that too with a bang. What happened next was going to linger in my mind for a long time.




Part II:

Out of nowhere came in a string of four cars and every one of them came to stop just near the house with a deafening ‘Ssssssccccccccrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeettttttttcccccchhhh’ with a bunch of cops jumping out with guns pointing right at us.

‘FfffrrrreEeEeEezzzeee..!’, shouted the cop before we could even blink.

‘HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD..!’, shouted the other cop.

‘What in the world is going on?’, I could not understand a thing.

‘Aaaaahhh, Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh’, that was my cousin’s friend, scared to death.

‘HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD..!’, warned the cops again.

‘Aaaaahhh, Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh’, she was still screaming.

‘What in the world is going on?’, I managed to shout back.

‘Son, you are under arrest for burglary..!’, shouted the cop.

I could not believe what I was hearing. Under arrest? For burglary? I certainly could not believe this was happening. I didn’t know what to do other than to close my eyes and hope that this was just a dream. Everything around me was as if I was watching the ‘Phone Booth’ in slow motion.

‘Its going to be ok, its just a dream. Cool it, you are just dreaming.’, I told myself with my eyes closed.

‘Aaaaahhh, Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh’, the screaming brought me back to my senses and made me realise that this was not a dream I was going to wake up from. This nightmare was for real and I was standing in the middle of it.

‘For God’s sake, stop shouting, WILL YOU?’, finally the cop made her stop screaming.

‘No..! No..! we are not stealing anything. We are just moving into this house..!’, I pleaded immediately.

‘What..? What the hell are you talking about?’, it was the cop.

‘Yeah..! we are new tenants of the house, for God’s sake. We are just now shifting in..!’, I shouted with the hope that they would understand.

‘This is ridiculous.’

‘Certainly not..! Believe me..! Please..! Believe me..!’

Another car came to a smooth stop, just near the cops’ vehicles. It was my cousin and her friend who had reached in record time with the new key. There they were the lifesavers of the night. J That was one of the so many times I thanked God that night.

‘That was a close call..!’, said on of the cops after a few minutes of ‘edge of the seat’ thrilling moments. Only then did they lower their guns and only then did I take in a long breath.

That was a really a pretty close call. Had my cousin’s cab reached a few minutes late, who knows, I would have been in jail: and that too without having tried out the first option of breaking the door.

It took us some time to sink in and get the things into the house. And all the time, the cops were hanging around just to make sure that we were alright and surely not what they thought we were. Anyways, after having moved most of the things in, I walked over to the cops.

‘Care for a cup of coffee officers?’, I asked.

Though the initial reply was a ‘strong stare’, the senior cop slowly smiled.

‘No thanks son. Just keep the noise down when you move the things in. We don’t want another emergency call coming in.’ J

I had never felt this much of an adrenalin rush in my entire life. The heart beat took a long time to settle down and so did the shivering. This was an adventurous night indeed. Being that close to getting arrested is an adventure, isn’t it? Well, almost. J

Just when the cops were about to leave, I over heard something about the whole fiasco.

‘The emergency call came in from the house 21 C. That’s the opposite house, isn’t it?’, the cops were asking each other before getting into the vehicle.

I turned around to see the house. So, they were the culprits. How in the world could they say I was burglar? Whoever it was, I was in a rage to pay it back when I had a chance.

By the time we woke up the next morning it was almost ten am. The adrenaline rush had settled down but there was some other feeling that had taken over. I was by then FURIOUS about what had happened. I was furious about this new neighbour who had called the police.

‘Me..? A burglar..! How could someone call the cops without knowing what was going on?!!!’, I shouted with all the fury.

‘Cool down will you..? talk about something else..!’, said my cousin.

‘What do you mean..? How would you cool down if someone called the police to get you arrested?’

‘Well, I don’t know. May be it was the time, the dull street light, someone six feet tall, bulky as you and the sort of hairstyle, beard. Even I would have called the cops’, she giggled.

‘Ha ha ha..! Very funny..! That was very funny..!’, I said very seriously. At the same time, there was soft knock on the door.

‘Get the door; I will switch on the music. It should relax you a bit.’

There was another knock while I started walking to the door, ‘Coming.. Coming.. Who is it?’, I asked while fumbling with the keys. I was finding it difficult to open the door as I was not used to this new lock.

And then, there came an unexpected reply. ... (To Be Continued)